Students uncover Colonial era secrets at Crown Point Historic Site

Lost French fort treasures unearthed at Adirondack historical site

By Tom French

In 1759, as the French were evacuating their fort at Crown Point because of 13,000 approaching British troops, the largest military force ever gathered in North America, the French blew up their own powder magazine in an explosion that hurled large chunks of stone hundreds of yards, fragments of which are still sometimes found along the shore.

In 1968, 209 years later, Roland Robbins, known for discovering Thoreau’s house at Walden Pond and other sites, was recruited by the state of New York and Crown Point Foundation to explore Fort St. Frédéric as part of developing a master plan for Crown Point as a state historic site. Robbins had a reputation for “brutish methods,” and his work at Crown Point included the use of bulldozers and backhoes.

He piled the tailings a quarter mile up the hill where they were largely forgotten until 2024, when Matthew O’Leary, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Syracuse University, organized the first Crown Point Archeological Field School.

Digging the past

“I was really interested in studying fort communities, particularly the French,” O’Leary said. “As I began to study Fort St. Frederick and the massive collection of records and artifacts at Peebles Island, I found files that led us to the Robbins piles. OPRHP (Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation) knew of the excavation, but the exact location of the piles wasn’t clear.”

Twelve students from SU recently finished a two-week archeological dig at the Robbins piles as part of a 6-credit elective. 

“This is an ideal location for a field school because the dirt has already been mixed up at least once,” said Sam Huntington, manager of the Crown Point State Historic Site. “There is nothing the students can do to disturb original structures. It’s a safe place to excavate without ruining historic features. They’re just big dirt piles, and fortunately, for the students, they’re rich in 18th-century artifacts.”

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The Peebles Island State Historic Site is the headquarters for OPRHP where they keep their curated collections, records and other historical materials.

The Robbins papers in Albany pointed toward the specific location. O’Leary and other students used a LIDAR drone to locate the individual mounds, perhaps as many as 32.

Fort St. Frédéric was built in 1734 as a replacement for a wooden fort across the lake where the Crown Point Bridge exists today. Perhaps the most impressive feature was a four-story, octagonal citadel with 12-foot-thick walls at its base where the powder magazine was located. More than two dozen cannons, such as the pierrier à boîte (swivel gun) on display in the Crown Point Museum, were mounted on each floor, some with a range of almost a mile. A small French village next to the fortification may have had as many as 1000 settlers at its peak. 

That all ended with the French and Indian War.

“The French fort was built to make an impression on the landscape and to control the trade in the Champlain Valley,” Huntington said. In other words, to prevent smuggling between the two countries.

Untouched area

The area has been referred to as the “last great unexcavated military site in North America.” Between the French and later British occupation, the earth is suffused with the detritus from thousands of people. Fort St. Frédéric especially has a mixture of both cultures because the British used the French moat as a midden, a trash dump. When Robbins excavated the area, the mix of French and British artifacts was mixed up even more.

“The piles are the perfect opportunity to conduct an educational experience to train future archaeologists in field methods and public interpretation without disturbing any new context,” O’Leary said. “Students are engaging with real, complex, and engaging materials without disturbing any new soil.”

This year, the opportunity to discover colonial-era artifacts was extended to the public with a Community Archaeology Program. 

“It’s not like gardening with a hoe,” O’Leary explained. “You basically scrape off a centimeter or two at a time. We’re educating folks on proper archaeological technique and working in partnership with Sam and Parks on public interpretation.”

Participants in a recent Adirondack Architectural History (AARCH) tour were also treated to an interpretation of the archeological discoveries by noted archeologist Paul Huey, who was unexpectedly onsite as part of O’Leary’s dissertation committee. Huey had a 40-year career with New York State Parks as its lead archaeologist. When the group arrived, Huey had just identified the rusted remains of a trigger guard from a musket. 

“We’ve been trying to figure this out for the better part of a week. And in 10 seconds, he nails it,” O’Leary said.

As if to give O’Leary an out, Huey said, “It’s made of iron which is unusual. Usually that part of the hardware is brass, but some muskets that were purely military might be iron.”

O’Leary lifted another baggie from a box of artifacts, and Huey and O’Leary continued a discussion on various bits of porcelain, creamware, stoneware and red earthenware found by the SU students.

A unique field offering

SU has offered field school opportunities for more than 35 years in New York, other locales in the U.S. and overseas in places such as the Caribbean and West Africa. According to Christopher DeCorse, Ph.D., Chair of the SU Anthropology Department and O’Leary’s advisor, the Crown Point program is unique for its proximity to Syracuse and its partnership with the OPRHP, the New York State Museum and the Crown Point Historic Site. Students also camp at the adjacent DEC campground which provides skills for those without outdoor experience.

“Field schools are key for anyone considering a career in archaeology,” DeCorse said. “They’re fun, and rain or shine, you are out there with other diggers sharing the discovery of the past.”

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Crown Point’s program was prompted by a chance encounter in the fall of 2022 between Huntington, O’Leary and DeCorse.

“I had been at Crown Point for just a few weeks when Kevin Farrar, who was working the front desk, called me. He had just met Professor DeCorse and Matthew, and he said ‘There’s some people down here, they’re archaeologists, and you might want to come talk to them,’” Huntington said.

O’Leary’s goal at the site is to show where each of Robbins’s piles came from in the fort. 

Shortly after the French fled, the British built a much larger fort, the remains of which are also at the Crown Point Historic Site. Its powder magazine exploded after a fire started in the kitchen in 1773. Before the end of the decade, the importance of the fort had diminished as the lines of battle moved elsewhere. The first tourist was George Washington who visited in 1883 when he toured battlefields he’d never been to.

O’Leary and the Field School plan to return for another season next May.

“Matthew is undertaking a very serious study of what we can do with the material that Robbins dug up,” Huey said. “There’s a chance that there’s still some time difference in the bottom and the top of the piles. Maybe we can figure out which pile came from which part of the site. It’s probably unlikely there’s much meaning to it, but the field school is the perfect solution, because the students are learning and they understand it’s not just hunting for artifacts. It’s more than that.”